The eyebrow raiser of this past week in Mexican politics was no doubt the participation of new U.S. Ambassador Roberta Jacobson in last Saturday’s 100,000 strong LGTBQ parade in Mexico City.
Ambassador Jacobson publicly declared her participation was to back the struggle of this much maligned community and was joined by members of other embassies, noticeably Canada, France, Finland and Norway.
Jacobson joined the colorful, float-studded parade at the Angel of Independence and marched all the way with the revelers to the Zócalo, Mexico City’s main plaza.
Her public support for the rainbow movement was definitely not well received by the nation’s Catholic hierarchy, which is nowadays engaged in a feud with President Enrique Peña Nieto for not consulting them about his recently enacted bill to make same-sex marriage a national reality.
And somehow supporting the ambassador from the fringes was President Peña himself, who on his Twitter account gave, once again, to the LGTBQ movement.
“Today thousands of people will march on the streets to celebrate diversity. My recognition to the #LGTBQ community for this celebration,” Peña tweeted.
In a separate tweet he added “I firmly believe that all Mexicans have the right to freely choose who to love and who to share their lives with.”
These tweets came while the parade was marching on.
Though at this moment the priests have kept their opinion on Ambassador Jacobson mum, they certainly haven’t made an international affair of it.
Instead, the Holy water spraying has focused on Peña Nieto himself, who is obviously challenging the chaste morality of traditional religion and the “sanctity” of the man-woman marital union.
But that’s Mexican open air politics, and not international diplomacy.
In my mind the unanswered question is why would Ambassador Jacobson take to the streets of Mexico City to support the LGBTQ Mexican movement?
Really looking back on all former ambassadors (from Poinsett to Wayne), they have kept away from the struggle of the LGBTQ community in Mexico, that its members have been forced to participate in since the beginning of time.
All ambassadors have focused on the diplomatic fronts and for the most part stayed away from participating in social performances such as the yearly June LGBTQ parade in Mexico City.
At worst, recent ambassadors got involved in love affairs with Mexican women, which was considered great gossip. In fact, Tony Garza was accused in the gossip media of being gay because he was single at age 40. He killed that gossip by marrying Mexican billionaire and Corona beer owner María Asunción Aramburuzavala. That was one of the biggest non-political scandals for a U.S. ambassador.
The biggest was when Obama appointed Carlos Pascual after getting booted by President Felipe Calderón. But that’s another story.
Did Ambassador Jacobson jump the gun?
I’d say that for the mostly conservative (or hypocritical, if you will) Mexican society, her move was an unexpected declaration of sexual orientation. If not, why else would anyone support the LGBTQ community?
The reality of all this is that Ambassador Jacobson’s support for the LGBTQ community in Mexico came — and rightly so — as an unexpected shock. Mexicans definitely never expected to see a U.S. ambassador in a public gay pride parade, but now that they have, the reality is that we don’t know what to make of it.
